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Macromedia Sues Adobe, Claims Photoshop Infringes Patent
jmorse writes: "According to this article at sfgate.com, Macromedia is suing Adobe for patent infringement, claiming that Adobe's Photoshop and GoLive products violate a patent they filed in 1998. The article is a little short on details, so I'm wondering if there are other sources with more on this patent." Adobe and Macromedia have been skirmishing and counter-skirmishing over patents for some time now. The AP article doesn't say which patent Adobe is supposed to be violating this time, so just pick any random thing that Photoshop does that Macromedia might have patented and express outrage about it. :)
charging excessive prices for software that I really appreciate and would like to pay for, except they're just out of my price range by leaps and bounds...
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
these companies make it seem almost fun.
every time I see companies do crap like this, and then I see the same kind of crap happen at work with our competitors, it makes me want to quit, but yet I don't, because I hope that in the greater scheme of things, this stupid litigation will be moot.
the hell.
its late, I'm going to bed.
eat shit and die, Bambi!
Pretending we're informed is going to be a stretch, but hokay, just to be different.
They all suck compared to GIMP!!!
I know that good/great patents are extremely important. There are probabally under 100 of these filled a year. Now I know that I personally filed about 12 last year, not a single one was what I would call a good ground breaking patent, they were all defensive patents...
I gained a friend in a the large company that I worked for legal dept... Basically the story went like this, when we are sued we look at their portfolio of patents, then look at our portfolio of patents that we have that might cause their products to infringe... Which ever pile is taller gets paid royalties by the other company. That is a defensive patent
Now lawyers have to be VERY careful not to use what are really defensive patents and go out looking for royalties, it makes everyone look bad.
This certaintly deserves to be a front-page story, since it will foster intense discussion among all readers.
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. -- Dr. Who
Hrmm, so Macromedia is just NOW saying Photoshop infringes on a patent of theirs? This is probably one of three things then:
1) This patent just became official, and now they are looking to cash in over it.
2) They have been looking for anything to sue Adobe over, and recently found this.
3) This is part of what will become a strategic, mushrooming legal attack by Macromedia.
(Aside: Personally, I think Macromedia can f*ck off, they write terrible software with horrible interfaces that produce terrible results 99.9% of the time!)
Eventually, they will both lose. When this happens, then we win.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
While i'm actually fond of both companies (well, recently very much less so with adobe over Dmitry/eBooks and the KIllustrator deal) i feel that this is just another patent squabble that will affect nothing in any future products, nothing in anyone's lives and will not be over anything ground breaking. It's all about the bottom line for two pretty wealthy companies and as such isn't much to talk about, especially with the sparse details.
I've read on a Macromedia Newsgroup recently that Macromedia bought some patents the NetObjects owned. I wonder if the timeing of the two events has anything to do with each other.
Heres a little info from NetObjects site:
http://www.netobjects.com/transition/
All I can say is that this is yet more proof that software patents are just a bad idea. Let's see; Photoshop has been around since the Dawn of Time by computer standards, and somehow it violates a Macromedia patent filed just 3 years ago. I'm using Photoshop 6 now, and as far as I can see, it does the same thing every other version has done, only with a few more mostly-useless bells and whistles. I bet the patent is either about some tiny little insignificant nitpicking function I'd never even notice, or is about something big and obvious that's been in editing utils since the Amiga or C64 days and should have never been awarded a patent.
Either way, every software patent I've ever seen covers something silly and obvious that shouldn't be patentable based on the fact that it's so obvious and isn't a real advancement at all. The real-world equivalent to most such patents would be like trying to patent a new Lego brick because you made it two rows longer. Uh-huh. Ingenious.
Take the infamous 1-click patent for example. All it is is a fairly obvious way to make shopping on line just like shopping in real life at a store where you have an account or tab. Hand the clerk at the store your stuff with your ID or account number, order is rung up, store already has billing information, customer leaves with product. Amazon's 1-click patent does the same thing, only on-line. Patentable my ass. Anything simple and obvious shouldn't be patentable.
I bet whatever this new Adobe/Macromedia fight is about, it's over something that should never have been patentable in the first place.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
I am certainly getting tired our funky patent process in general. It takes too long. You can patent the wheel. You can sue people for using wheels. What next?
As a patent owner (well, I dont have direct rights to the patent but I get a hefty % of all profits) I feel all of these frustrations. These patent wars of patenting things seemingly with the sole purpose of using them to sue others is downright silly. However, that brings me to the point of this post.
As a patent owner, I have to think about this question. If you had a patent that someone was violating (be it a sane patent or otherwise) would you sit back and watch? Or would you jump at the chance of getting a few $million? One more suit wont make the problem that much worse, right? I think that may be a large part of the problem.
"One more won't hurt..."
"One more won't make a difference..."
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
What do you want me to say? Live by the sword, die by the sword.
This is [ridiculous|stupid|ludicrous|lame]! How can Macromedia patent ______? I was doing _____ on my [Z80|8086|Altair] in the [1970s|1980s]. It's really [easy|trivial|fast] to implement. I could write it right now in [Perl|C|Python|Java|INTERCAL]! The USPTO needs to gain some [sense|accountability|knowledgeable employees (like me)]. Still, Adobe [deserves|asked for|needs] a taste of their own medicine! I can't be too upset about them getting sued. It's [kharma|fate|divine intervention].
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
...this is why software patents are bad juju.
Don't even get me started on Adobe's 'Rights Management' crap.
My company has spent a little over $1300 on Adobe products. Of course, I could never justify spending this much personally for what many consider to be 'essential' tools for web design and publishing. A great deal of this. I imagine that a great deal of this goes to fund Adobe's legal departement and executive management layer. We know for a fact that that all three of these flagship products could be replicated by OSS programmers with not a lot of difficulty. It would be a large project, but most of that art functionality is already in GIMP. The rest is spread around a few other art and publishing tools.
That's right. Adobe's hideously inflated prices go to support their vast corporate empire, and *not* to better their products. They could be doing better, but they're not.
Macromedia is no better, having done their best to replace Adobe in the position of being an unofficial 'industry standard' when it comes to web design. If they did this with quality products, it would be one thing, but they try to do it with lawsuits, legal gimmicks, and customer abuse. Flash could be so much bigger than it is now if it were an open standard. Most of the web developers I know would vastly prefer to work with Flash rather than crank out lameo HTML and CSS.
For shame!
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
My luck I spelled 'cotton gin' wrong. ;>
While I mostly agree with what you said, sometimes really obvious ideas are important (and not quite so obvious). The cotton gin is a great example- a simple device with a very basic purpose that should be very obvious, yet it didnt pop in anyone's head as early as we think it could have in hindsight. This bad boy invention ultimately helped bring some pretty big changes in the US.
But the cotton gin made it's inventer jack. The guy who make the first tv also made jack from his invention. Kind of makes you wonder.
Both inventions were made after patents were made available in the US, but the inventers both made zip. That also kind of makes you wonder.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
just can't remember exactly but it does most likely have to do with how Macromedia UI is. I believe something to do with how you click on an icon and can tear it away and place it wherever on the screen. I believe this is good for the goose. I mean that let those companies screw each other. Baby joey just give me Dreamweaver on Linux and I'm in love with you baby.
Since tech details are a bit sparse, I'm not quite sure which patent this is or whether it is frivilous, but quite frankly, I like seeing someone (try to) take a bite out of the big guy... And Adobe is the Microsoft of the digital image world.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes - Juvenal
i think my brother is going to sue me because i came out first but for got tell every1 about it. what kind of crap is this. lets get real. oh yeah this doesnt effect me in either way. i wont see flogging dime
Of course, patents suck. But, after Adobe's actions against Dmitry, and I don't care if Adobe repealled its call to the FBI, I will cheer for any activity leading to the demise of Adobe. Patent suits, with expensive attorney's fees, can only eat away at a company's financial chest, particularly during the current economic downtrend.
Adobe can go to hell.
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
This is the real timing issue:
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/011015/naf283024_1.html
Adobe not only has to pay for engineer time (which may or may not be equal to the open source efforts), but management, marketing, support/IT, legal, and equipment(including buildings)
On top of that, they have ~40 products and ~5 technologies to support.
Not only that, for the most part, they aren't *imitating* another product; they have to design, test, and distribute their products that Open Source guys don't have to worry about.
GPL Deconstructed
My guess is that this is a continuation of last year's suit(s) where Macromedia is claiming they own the "tabbed palette" technology that Adobe has incorporated into Photoshop.
b e. shtml
r el eases/200008/20000810macro.html
Here are some links from Aug 2000:
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0008/10.ado
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/press
In any case, it looks like Macromedia isn't going to let up too easily on trying to drive Adobe under.
There is also an article in the Washington Post which mostly gives the same information we have already but also cites the case more specifically as "Macromedia v. Adobe, C01-3940". So the next step is Findlaw which can get us to the web site of, say, the district court for Northern California (disclaimer: I'm not sure that is the right district but it is a decent guess). That web site seems to say there is lots of fascinating information on PACER but that's a pay service. So I think I'm more or less at a dead end (although I didn't try, say, searching the patent databases looking for macromedia owned patents which look plausible).
As for why PACER costs $$$, they answer that on the PACER site as follows:
Isn't that almost exactly what Adobe were suing Macromedia over? Has the US Patent Office granted both of them almost exactly the same patent?
This could get interesting...
"The panels can be docked by dragging a first panel and dropping it in proximity with a second panel while holding down a modifier key. When the panels are docked, a docking wedge is created between the panels. Docked panels can be moved as if the panels were a single panel."
This is silly.
It is just like dragging one icon or filename from one list to another, except that the "icons" are fat and complicated.
Table-ized A.I.
All I can say is that this is yet more proof that software patents are just a bad idea.
I don't think proof is the appropropriate word - evidence perhaps. Yes you can site a hundred examples of large companies taking unfair advantage of patents. Probably more than a hundred.
But that's what large companies do. They take advantage of the law when ever possible; part of the reason they are large corporations is because they do this. If there were no software patents large corporations would use that to their advantage as well. The biggest guy out there would simply systimatically wedge all his oponents out of existence by selling there product at a lower price. Even if the product is just a concept. Even if they take a loss in the process if they have more capital they will survive. Just like a poker player who raises his opponents until they can no longer afford to play.
Ultimatly patents aren't about rightousness or equality. They are about (a) giving companies and individuals motivation to invest into research and (b) to lessen the gap between the haves and the have nots.
If you want to prove that patent law helps large corporations more than they hurt them you would have to run two parallel societies: one with patent law, one without. Until then we can only gather evidence. And try to continually weight that evidence against the invisible contrary evidence from the invisible alternative society.
This is old news for these two companies...
They have been sueing and counter-sueing for quite a while, i.e.:
And so on...
Some good info:
www.cptech.com has some good info and links on the two sueing and counter-sueing.
macweek.com seems to indicate the the whole thing is over the fact that 'that Adobe Premiere violates two patents related to visual display and editing of soundforms. Macromedia also contended that Adobe's patents in the case are invalid and thus unenforceable.'
This seems to be a defense patent battle, in that both sides are trying to invalidate the other sides patents...
A few more links...
www.creativemac.com says 'Macromedia Fires Back at Adobe'
And an editorial by WebDeveloper.com... and I quote:
Ultimately, I would say this a standard battle of patents. Such things have taken place many a time, this time it just happens to involve software patents, and thus happens upon the radar of geeks and slashdot...
Is anyone else having problems posting to slashdot, or am I just losing my mind? And why do I need a sourceforge account to log a slashdot bug?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Basically the story went like this, when we are sued we look at their portfolio of patents, then look at our portfolio of patents that we have that might cause their products to infringe... Which ever pile is taller gets paid royalties by the other company. That is a defensive patent.
That is one of the stupidest things I've ever read, and makes me all the more happy I purchased the Alan Cox software patents shirt. When a measure meant to protect inventors becomes a way for two companies to hold silly legal dicksize contests, it's a sign the system is broken and needs fixing, or scrapping, or something. Anything to halt the flood of crap that flows through the USPTO... and the Slashdot front page.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
I just did a bit of digging around on the USPTO site and narrowed the search down to Macromedias patents: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2Fsearch-bool.ht ml&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=macromedia&FIELD1=ASNM&co1=A ND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=ft00
-Tim
i would have to say everyone owes the guys that wrote deluxe paint for the amiga money. a lot of it.
I'm actually *really* surprised macromedia hasnt said anything about adobe stealing (and vastly improving, btw) fFlash. live motion, while being much easier to use, is just a proprietary clone which generates the same swf as fFlash.
Not only you, but many others, are cheering on Macromedia as they bring this legal action against Adobe. In some respects, yeah, cool. But you have to remember one thing: corporations who use patents to secure a foothold on a technology/idea/whatever, are not champions of open source ideals. Macromedia is just as evil as Adobe when it comes to corporate principles, so don't look at them as taking justice for what Adobe has done in the past. They'd just as soon slap the little guy around with the DMCA as Adobe would.
Why bother.
Both companies are known for their open source support.Loosing such contributors will be assasination on linux and other GNU projects. People
get real, it's time to unite and make no mistake Microsoft will create MS Office for linux one day.
i can't believe this has to be mentioned again..
http://openswf.org/
a flash evengelist. screw dhtml.
/// evilloop.com
I thought we were supposed to hate Adobe??
i had grips of their software titles NEW IN BOX that i was selling on ebay. i got the gear from my dot com that had went under, it was the lot they purchased just before they sunk, and i got to sell it on ebay. both macromedia and adobe tried to sue me! Lawyers decended, auctions were canceled, everyone was surley, i drank heavily.... they wanted me to open the boxes, send the liscense key and wait for their "OKAY." i was like, fuck you pay me. i sold the software for a little less than i wanted to the poor saps that had the auctions canceled on them...
in the end i wish both companies a fist full of nothing and pint urine.
.cig
I'm using Photoshop 6 now, and as far as I can see, it does the same thing every other version has done, only with a few more mostly-useless bells and whistles.
If you can't see a difference between Photoshop 3 or 4 and Photoshop 6 you must be blind, or extremely near-sighted as your post cleverly suggests. For people like me who deal with images, web page layouts, and "real designers" on a daily basis, Photoshop 6 is a basic requirement.
The AP article doesn't say which patent Adobe is supposed to be violating this time, so just pick any random thing that Photoshop does that Macromedia might have patented and express outrage about it.
Why is this news? I am supposed to pick a patent lawsuit and express outrage about it? What?
The quality of the news on /. sucks lately.
Read this completely before you mod it as flamebait.
Most of the web developers I know consider Flash to be a standards-breaking, improperly used piece of ass. But then, most of the web devs I know are rabid about making damned good and sure that the lowest common denominator can use their site. On a modem.
I'm a professional graphics designer. I live in photoshop. The GIMP - the closest thing that OSS has to a graphics app - is a huge steaming pile of poo compared to the ease of use, power, stability (on a Mac, no less!), and most importantly, USEABILITY of Photoshop (version 5, don't get me started on 6). The GIMP is "almost photoshop", everyone says. We (the graphics community) can NOT use "almost". What we NEED is "Better Than Photoshop".
I've seen a lot of GIMP art. I've seen a lot of Photoshop art. The capacity and useability of GIMP - particularly with regards to fonts, anti-aliasing, color control (emphasis), et. al., is severly lacking. I've seen some mindblowing graphics produced with photoshop.... I have yet to see anything comprable with the GIMP.
A *PROFESSIONAL* graphic design app is a good deal more difficult to execute than a window manager, an office suite, or an IRC client. OSS is almost worthy with Nautilus, barely palatable with word processing, stinks horribly at fonts, has produced a number of excellent IRC clients, and a stable as well as surprisingly portable codebase.
The functionality that graphics people demand isn't there because graphics people don't code and coders don't do graphics (some think they can in both cases, but the evidence supports my statement). Hence, a graphics person that depends on Photoshop has about a 99.9% chance of not knowing a single line of code, and hence, not knowing how to build what he wants to use for free. The issue with OSS is that the "by geeks, for geeks" mentality is simply incapable of producing an application of the quality and caliber of Photoshop- it takes a corporation like Adobe with the money and management to ram the coders and the artists together to get the results necessary to produce a useable application.
If Adobe and Macromedia's killer apps could be "easily replicated" by OSS, then why haven't they been? I don't know a SINGLE graphic designer that works in Linux. I know two that work in Windows. The rest use MacOS- and of the MacOS users, ONE uses OS X , and she runs her apps in Classic. NONE use or recommed the GIMP. Point of fact, it is a common conclusion within the Pittsburgh professional graphics community that the GIMP is very good at making very bad art. Likely due to the fact that "configue / make / make install" and "Orator 24 point/ Soft Light / desaturate/ color balance / variations (blue, two iterations)" involve two completely different sides of the brain.
Photoshop is worth the price tag. It is the ONLY graphics app out there that can do what professionals demand- easily, smoothly, and in a stable fashion (on a Mac- hasn't crashed on me once, minus poorly coded third party plugins). Compared to the price points of comprable video compositing and editing software, Photoshop is CHEAP.
When the GIMP (or comprable app) can use the photshop 5 keyboard shortcuts (and actually DO with equal effectiveness what those shortcuts key to), get color right, support a gazillion fonts, do alpha channels and selections on the flip of a click, read PSD files, launch in under ten seconds, dynamically allocate swap disks (something photoshop doesn't do), AND competently handle a 11x17 @ 600 DPI image with 45 pixel layers and 30 type layers... AND manage five gigs of swap disk without dumping core.... then I'll think about actually seriously using it to do some work.
The day that OSS can produce a useable graphics app - that can be installed in less than five clicks without resorting to a terminal - is the day I cease dual booting.
That day is nowhere near. We'll see another thousand or so IRC clients on sourceforge before we see a Better Than Windows WM, let alone a Better Than Photoshop graphics app.
M$ got where it is through marketing and a couple of BAD decisions on the part of IBM.
Adobe got where it is by making QUALITY products that do what professional graphic artists NEED to do. Nothing compares to Photoshop in terms of functionality, flexibility, and stability. N O T H I N G.
I suppose that Adobe technically has a monopoly, but in this case, they have earned it through right of coding a product that is FAR and above superior to everything else. It's the Industry Standard for image manipulation and creation for a reason - it's GOOD. Nobody that uses Photoshop bitches about it (generally- a few people prefer 5 to 6, but it's semantics- nobody that likes 5 and hates 6 is going to jump ship to another app).
From a graphics standpoint, Macromedia makes the better HTML editor (dreamweaver) and image optimizer (fireworks) - but Fireworks sucks in many areas... and on the other side of the fence, Adobe Illustrator is a BITCH to print form at weird sizes, and Macromedia Freehand does color seperation for print (shirts, cloth, hats, etc.) in its sleep, whereas Illustrator doesn't even bother.
Companies are suing each other with stupid claims of patent infringement. Ok, ok, ok. Okay! OKAY!!! I guess it's possible that the people who make patent rulings are going to listen to our opinions about how stupid these claims are. Maybe the word "representative" in the phrase "congressional representative" refers to representing the public interest. Maybe professional wrestling is real too. I'll have to give these possibilities some thought. Meanwhile, somewhere in the world, other things are happening.
To: Litigating Patent Holders
From: B.Franklin, Geo. Read, Jaco. Broom et. al.
Dear Sir,
We understand that you are planning to embark on certain legislation that will require the invocation of section eight of the document known as "The Constitution of the United States", specifically the clause that reads:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
We wish to remind you that this text is covered by modern copyright law. Should you find it necessary to refer to this clause, or any clause of the document, in your pleadings to the court we will require that you pay a reasonable and non-discriminatory fee. This fee will reflect the value of the document to the United States.
We trust that you will contact us before use or publication of our copyrighted material.
Kind Regards,
The Founding Fathers
Well... Macromedia might have done pretty well with Flash etc. but Adobe will always be the graphics champ, been around a little bit longer and have, some may argue, the best graphics suite going.. Who wants to write a flash plug-in for photoshop? :)
"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story..."
is the one being violated here.
:)
After all, how many of you seriously know anyone who legally owns Photoshop?
(Oh, wait, maybe that's because of the reee-deeec-uuuuu-lous price of it.
"But.. But.. Our programmers have to eat!"
What, all the steak in Montana?
I wish companies would stop bloating prices just because they want to support MSCE's who know nothing think they deserve $80+k a year.
Give em what for, Macromedia. Destroy each other. Adobe is quite replacable by open source counterparts, and.. Well.. The only thing I'll miss about Macromedia are those funny anti bin Laden animations everyone makes.
They create standards, document them well, and encourage other people to use them. They do not change the standards to encourage migration to their products. For instance: PostScript, PDF. PhotoShop plugins are supported by third party apps as well.
They release new versions of their products (not counting free patches (eg, ps 6.0 -> 6.01)) when they have significantly and notably improved them. I never used photoshop before 3, but each and every version since (4,5,5.5,6) have been much improved.
They dominate the market through producing what is widely regarded by those in the industry as a superior product. As far as I know they don't have to resort to anti-competitive exclusivity contracts with anyone in particular, for instance.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
You can choose to ignore the impacts, or you can choose to complain about their negative influence while ignoring the root cause, but you can't choose to make it irrelevant, any more than you can choose to make professional wrestling "real."
No Laughing Allowed!
... actually made any *real* money from licencing software patents?
For the same vendors, what has been the actual combined cost in payments to and employment of patient lawyers and costs of legal disputes?
Also
A patient is effectively a monopoly on an intellectual property granted by a govenment -- BUT if an intellectual property is being abused to create a monopoly then it breaches the antitrust act? ( See http://www.ftc.gov/speeches/other/aipla.htm )
Would selective or even negotiable licencing put groups of licence holders into effectively being a cartel?
Also
If Europe and other nations deny that a patient on software is valid, what is to stop the whole USA software industry emigrating?
Would this not put the US back into the 1950s, technology wise?
Also
Did not Henry Ford at first ignore and then go to court to break patients which would have held back the Model A?
And you still want me to believe that patents "help" the companys (or anyone at all)? Yeah... right...
this time by Macromedia, when they have time to do so?
¦ ©® ±
Just goes to show how software patents ...( if not already )
,but doing them differently.Instead of patents id like to
are incredibly ridiculous.
Maybe adding two numbers in binary will be patented one day
If you sense a touch of irony in my writing you are right.You cant really patent things like software without creating great harm.Two
pwoplw might do the same thing
see the market place decide what's good and not.The hell with software patents.
They just slow down the progress in technology.
I've seen some mindblowing graphics produced with photoshop.... I have yet to see anything comprable with the GIMP.
You know what? I have seen some mindblowing graphics done in image editor coming with Windows 3.11. Moreover, I have seen some mindblowing graphics produced without any help of Photoshop or computer at all. Actually, some of it is hanging on my walls right now.
Saying "tool X sucks because I have seen better graphics made with tool Y" is basically saying "guitar sucks because my brother plays good on violin". That's plain stupid argument.
When the GIMP (or comprable app) can use the photshop 5 keyboard shortcuts
Well, here is another stupid argument coming. Judging professional application by keyboard shortcut compatibility with other application. Is it trained monkey who is going to use it? So that once imprinted with some basic keyboard accords it cannot do anything else effectively? Oh my...
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Let's see what gimp can do...
:P
* can use the photshop 5 keyboard shortcuts - no, it can only use gimp shortcuts
* get color right - yes
* support a gazillion fonts - gimp uses the x (font) server to render fonts - XFree86 can load ttf fonts. - yes
* do alpha channels and selections on the flip of a click - yes
* read PSD files - it can, but it's not perfect - no (oth, can photoshop load xcf files? no.)
* launch in under ten seconds - yes (wow i didn't know photoshop could do that!)
* dynamically allocate swap disks - not swap disks, but temporary files - yes
* competently handle a 11x17 @ 600 DPI image with 45 pixel layers and 30 type layers - yes
* manage five gigs of swap disk without dumping core - if you can have 5 gigs of swap in your os, then the gimp can use it - yes
Just because you can't install it, doesn't mean it's not good.
I've seen a lot of GIMP art. I've seen a lot of Photoshop art. The capacity and useability of GIMP - particularly with regards to fonts, anti-aliasing, color control (emphasis), et. al., is severly lacking. I've seen some mindblowing graphics produced with photoshop.... I have yet to see anything comprable with the GIMP
You know, I much prefer Photoshop to the GIMP myself. But this statement is just crap. Has it occurred to you that there might be so much more "mindblowing" photoshop art because over 90% of art colleges are TEACHING PHOTOSHOP!? And the students of these places are already artistically talented people. So there is simply a far greater number of Photoshop users out there, and the percentage of Photoshop users that are artistically talented is much higher than of GIMP users. Most GIMP users probably have technical, not artistic backgrounds. So OBVIOUSLY there is going to be a lot more great photoshop art out there than GIMP art.
If you really want to be scientific about it, do a study of 100 artworks done by randomly selected real artists using GIMP, and compare them to 100 artworks done by randomly selected real artists using Photoshop.
The GIMP is powerful, and I don't think there is any basis for your statements about fonts, of all things. If you're going to criticise GIMP, there are things that are much more worthy of criticism - which is why I'm guessing that you haven't really used GIMP very much.
As I said though, I prefer Photoshop, the main reasons being: (1) the interface, its just so much more usable, (2) I already know Photoshop well, there is not enough incentive for me to head off on a new learning curve. But at least I have used GIMP fairly extensively at times in the past, back in the days of Photoshop 4, where feature-wise it still compared well to Photoshop.
How can you say the GIMP doesn't support "a gazillion fonts"? The GIMP supports all the fonts you have installed on your system, if you don't know how to install new fonts its your problem, my Linux box has hundreds of fonts installed. And complaining about keyboard shortcuts and PSD files is like complaining that Photoshop doesn't use GIMPs keyboard shortcuts and that it doesn't read XCF files - thats just lame. And why should GIMP allocate swap disks when the OS has a decent disk swapping mechanism? GIMP scripting is about 1000 times more powerful than Photoshops "actions".
Come on - I'm sure if you knew GIMP better you could have come up with FAR more valid criticisms against it. You come across as someone who tried GIMP for a couple of days at most and felt frustrated because it "wasn't like Photoshop", which you already knew. I'm not saying you are, but thats how you sound.
Saying "tool X sucks because I have seen better graphics made with tool Y" is basically saying "guitar sucks because my brother plays good on violin". That's plain stupid argument
But that's not the argument he's making. Hes saying that perhaps the GIMP is so substandard it isn't possible to make good art with it without fighting the program itself, therefore noone talented enough has ever been able to fight it and succeed in creating good art.
This is NOT in any way a bad argument -- you may not like the fact that a program has to prove itself, but if you're trying to sell to professionals, thats what it has to do. Someone with the GIMP has to create some work that people will say "hmm, the GIMP can do that? that's really nice, I want to find out how it was done". Until someone with an interest in proving the GIMP's capabilities does this (and of course GIMP itself is capable of doing it!) then we as professionals have to assume that the real problem is that GIMP is inadequate as a professional tool.
From my time in GIMP I can definitely say i wouldn't choose it over many other options short of Windows Paint. It has few high-quality features, but lots and lots of time-wasting and idiotic programmer crap that is targetted at people who couldn't come up with a workable color scheme if you put a gun to their head.
Which is fine -- there's nothing wrong with an "image editor for programmers". But don't try to sell it as "Photoshop, but better!" because there is no evidence (final work) to support that.
(as a side tangent to show that this really does apply in real life -- "real artists" stayed away from acrylic paints for decades because they didn't believe they were up to the challenge. It wasn't until a few talented folks actually got around to figuring out how to take advatage of the unique characteristics (and the paints themselves had evolved a lot!) that professionals accepted the medium -- so we're not just picking on the GIMP)
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Even if we accept that a small handful of individuals were willing to innovate (accepting all the costs that come with it) without IP, this does not make IP any less necessary. Besides the fact that they can STILL invent even with the existence of IP, they are a minority. Most individuals need IP if they are to quit their jobs, spend their savings, and years of their life towards such pursuits. This is especially true of companies. There is no comparison between the amount of time/resources spent on innovation today versus that of before reasonably-strong IP protections.
10 $SUE = MACROMEDIA
20 IF $SUE = MACROMEDIA THEN $SUE2 = ADOBE
30 GOTO 10
Perhaps, just perhaps, one day rather then trying to sue each other out of existence they will try and make a better product?
The capacity and useability of GIMP - particularly with regards to fonts, anti-aliasing
Apple has patented the hinting mechanisms in TrueType.
color control (emphasis), et. al., is severly lacking.
Probably because Apple, Adobe, and Pantone own broad patents in many jurisdictions on all known feasible methods of color correction that produce acceptable results (i.e. better than C,M,Y = 1.0 - R,G,B; K = min(C,M,Y); C,M,Y -= K).
Hence, a graphics person that depends on Photoshop has about a 99.9% chance of not knowing a single line of code, and hence, not knowing how to build what he wants to use for free.
Which explains the lack of a scripting language in Photoshop. GIMP, on the other hand, supports Scheme and Perl scripting and C and C++ filters.
it takes a corporation like Adobe with the money and management to ram the coders and the artists together to get the results necessary to produce a useable application.
If you consider "results" to include "broad patents on color correction that keep everybody else from competing in the prepress market," I agree.
If Adobe and Macromedia's killer apps could be "easily replicated" by OSS, then why haven't they been?
Because developers want users in the United States to be able to use their software legally.
Point of fact, it is a common conclusion within the Pittsburgh professional graphics community that the GIMP is very good at making very bad art.
Programs don't make bad art; bad artists make bad art. A license saying that "bad artists may not use this program and thereby tarnish the image of the program" would look ridiculous to me.
"Orator 24 point/ Soft Light / desaturate/ color balance / variations (blue, two iterations)"
Nearly the same steps in GIMP. I have used Gaussian Blur then Curves to do some nice neon effects.
Photoshop is worth the price tag.
Perhaps for you. I don't use the prepress features (I do mostly game and web graphics), so I see a stripped-down version of Photoshop called Photoshop Elements as more worth the price tag.
When the GIMP (or comprable app) can use the photshop 5 keyboard shortcuts
You can change any GIMP shortcut by right-clicking an image to open the menu, hovering over a menu item, and pressing the key you want to use to activate the menu item. Most GTK+ apps work the same way.
get color right
Again, if this were implemented, GIMP would not be available in the United States of America or any other jurisdiction where somebody has a patent on using LUT-interpolated vector transformation for color correction.
support a gazillion fonts
GIMP supports as many fonts as you have installed on your system. I can see all my TrueType fonts from my copy of GIMP 1.2 for Windows.
read PSD files
Do you also expect Photoshop to read XCF files? Find me the spec for PSD files, and I'll send it to the GIMP people to implement.
launch in under ten seconds
On what kind of computer? Photoshop 5 takes over a minute to launch on my old 75 MHz Mac.
The day that OSS can produce a useable graphics app - that can be installed in less than five clicks without resorting to a terminal
Depends on how you have your window manager and desktop environment set up. I'll use Windows 98 Explorer for example, as that's what most popular *n?x desktops try to emulate, adding one step whenever the state of a mouse button changes from UP to DOWN. I'll also assume you turned the annoying CD-ROM Autorun feature off.
Note that instead of steps 1-4, I simply type F:\ into any open Explorer window.
Look for a GIF checkbox. Fail to find it because of Unisys's discriminatory licensing policies. Give up.
And you still haven't calibrated your display resolution. Because many poorly-written but popular Windows applications will not run correctly if the display resolution is set to anything but 96 dpi, many graphics applications (including GIMP) include their own settings for resolution.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Just wondering?
We wish to remind you that this [United States Constitution] is covered by modern copyright law.
Ignoring that works of the U.S. government immediately go to public domain, recent retroactive copyright term extensions may eventually make jokes similar to this a reality by exploiting a loophole in the "for limited Times" language. Yes, the courts consider one billion years and two days to count as a "limited time" under the letter of the Constitution.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I just had to comment on this... I am a graphics professional myself and the one thing that has always bugged me about photoshop was how it handled fonts. To start with, it's quite hard to find the perfect font you want without some clever mouse manipulation, and even if you do find the one you want, be happy if PS doesn't die on you when you select it. Yes, it dies completely because it can't handle the font file.. so some would be quick to blame the font for PS crashing. However, I wrote a small VB app in about 15 minutes to let me see and make a list of fonts very quickly.. and I use that to pick my fonts. It has never crashed.. even on the same fonts PS does. (Which, co-incidently, I'm releasing open-source).
Another point.. I actually get paid to do graphic design et al., and people seem to be happy with my work.. and I hold a computing science degree. So I think there are some who can be artistic, and coders, at the same time. If you insist on separating the two then I say you are lacking in talent, or just haven't tried. Look up 'The Art of Programming'.. it's a good book.
until there are commercial quality publishing, illustration, vector animation and image editing apps (that at least have rudimentary support for CMYK color!)
That'll take about twenty years until the patents on using LUT-interpolated vector transformation to do CMYK separation (the only known feasible method) run out.
Will I retire or break 10K?
You are 100% correct regarding the GIMP vs. Photoshop. The GIMP _MAY_ be a replacement for Paintshop Pro (ok, not quite). The GIMP is "cool" and "neat" (I like having access to the libs from Perl, for example), but it's nowhere near a professional graphics package.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
"The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
I've been looking for a job in the DC metro area, and the USPTO is desperately trying to get more patent reviewers. In fact, I believe they offer bonuses to Comp Sci people (over us less useful mechanical engineers). Check it out here:
This poster is dead wrong on the facts. Firstly, IP was recognized in the US Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 [nara.gov], long before the invention of the cotton gin.
Uh huh. And the guy you're replying to said "both inventions were made AFTER patents were made available in the US."
So how is that fact in dispute?
"And like that
This lawsuit could very well be related to Macromedia's recent purchase of NetObject's patents: Macromedia Buys NetObjects Patents, Website Pros Buys Assets . From the article:
More importantly than the sale of the software itself perhaps, Macromedia has got its claws into 11 highly valuable US patents that NetObjects was granted over the past couple of years. Among them is a patent on the concept of WYSIWYG HTML editors, which NetObjects was granted on the basis of its Fusion software.
NetObjects CEO Samir Arora told ComputerWire in June that he believed Macromedia's Dreamweaver and Microsoft's Frontpage use technology covered by the patent. "Anything that does WYSIWYG page layouts that auto-generate HTML is violating the patent," he said at the time. "We're going after anybody we believe is in violation."
cpeterso
::When the GIMP (or comprable app) can use the photshop 5 keyboard shortcuts
:Well, here is another stupid argument coming. Judging professional application by keyboard shortcut compatibility with other application. Is it trained monkey who is going to use it? So that once imprinted with some basic keyboard accords it cannot do anything else effectively? Oh my...
Oh, knock it off. Keeping a UI that you've used daily for the last ten years and know *intimately* is a totally reasonable justification for using a piece of software. So you're a coder, right? Let's see...I'm guessing that you, like me, would *scream like hell* if someone tried to pry emacs away from you and make you use vi. I rather suspect that vi can do most things that emacs does, but I *know* emacs well, and vi just enough to use for basic editing chores. I've *used* and *extended* emacs for years.
You want this artist to throw away all their experience, ten years of practice? So they can try some other piece of software? Yeah right...
Please somebody mod this guy up. His point about the patents should be heard.
War is necrophilia.
Somebody else said it and I'll say it again in case it gets lost in the noise.
Why don't you rail against adobe to open up their file formats so that GIMP can open them. Why don't you complain to these companies to release their patents on color correction and font manipulation so that GIMP can implement them. One of the main reasons why GIMP can't do these things is that it's actually ILLEGAL for them to do it. It's one thing to expect open source developers to implement some feature it's another to expect them to go to jail of face bankrupcy from a lawsuit.
War is necrophilia.
Hopefully they will destroy each other.
For the last time, boys and girls:
Stealing != Copyright Violation
Jesus Christ... How many times does this point need to be made?
stealing copyright violation
* procure good * procure good
illegally illegally
* deprive previous
holder of good of
their 'copy'
Now, this is *not* to condone copyright violation.
Ultimately, it does deprive the copyright holder
of revenue; how much is an open question (IMO certainly not what the SPA estimates indicate --- they assume that you'd buy the original if you couldn't copy it, which is frequently an invalid
assumption.) However, calling piracy 'theft' is like calling assault 'murder': Both are bad, but it's a matter of degree. Would you send someone to the chair for punching you in the nose?
Weaving exaggerations into a moral assertion is a classic Sophist's maneuver. So I guess my point is, 'if you can't post like the big boys, don't fall back on irritating rhyming maxims'.
- undoware.ca
This is getting ridiculous.
Maybe there is hope in the future. Perhaps all corporations will merge into one single gigantic corporation that controls everything. Then this corporation will infringe its own patents and compete with itself. Maybe it will then sue itself out of existance.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
Windows does" tabbed palettes" too, open Display Properties. It's isn't technology, it's a freakin button! a BUTTON! a LITTLE RECTANGLE ON A COMPUTER SCREEN IS NOT TECHNOLOGY, IT'S A FRIGGIN RECTANGLE! This is exactly why software patents are bad.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
That the first sign of the impending death of any tehnology company is when they start paying lawyers rather then engineers.
Something to think about.
"Nearly the same steps in GIMP. I have used Gaussian Blur then Curves to do some nice neon effects."
Exactly! You can do any basic task, and some functions of photomanipulation that are quite up to date with photoshop. I run linux on my MMx laptop with 32 meg ram, and the gimp rocks...Photoshop would have crashed way more in say win98.
This guy
"Photoshop is worth the price tag."
can't imagine a bus shelter or cereal box that wasnt done with kais power toolz.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
There is a difference in 'property' and a right granted 'to promote the progress of science and useful arts'.
of patents?
In gimp you can change the keyboard shortcuts for most mice events. If know the photoshop equivalent you can just edit the gimp config to mimic the photoshop events.
When a measure meant to protect inventors becomes a way for two companies to hold silly legal dicksize contests, it's a sign the system is broken and needs fixing, or scrapping, or something.
Agreed. IANAPL (Patent Lawyer), but it seems to me that companies should not own patents. In the eyes of the law, a corporation is a person, but I think that's misleading. It never has to die, it never has to stop suing people because it runs out of money like an individual would, and so on and so forth.
I think only people should own patents, jointly or otherwise. I'd like to see those who produce gain ownership of the fruits of their labor; they may get paid by a company to do some work, but something so novel to be patented should be owned by those in development.
That alone would make companies considerably more indifferent to patenting. Focusing on putting out better products, cheaper, and faster, and competing directly with other companies should be their goal, not using anti-competitive practices like patents to gain market share with inferior products.
An interesting side effect of such an arrangement is that companies would then learn to take care of their scientists. Not only that, but a scientist would then have a value portfolio of patents that codifies their experience when job shopping.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
My company has spent a little over $1300 on Adobe products. Of course, I could never justify spending this much personally for what many consider to be 'essential' tools for web design and publishing. A great deal of this. I imagine that a great deal of this goes to fund Adobe's legal departement and executive management layer. We know for a fact that that all three of these flagship products could be replicated by OSS programmers with not a lot of difficulty. It would be a large project, but most of that art functionality is already in GIMP. The rest is spread around a few other art and publishing tools.
That's right. Adobe's hideously inflated prices go to support their vast corporate empire, and *not* to better their products. They could be doing better, but they're not.
*sigh* To preface this... i dont like adobe. I really, really dislike them... mostly because I have to pay them so much money also. But the issues you talk about aren't just relegated to adobe...
You know what? OSS companies COULD duplicate photoshop, given enough time and access to the code and the intricasies that have been built into photoshop for years and years.
The problem is, they probably would not have come =up= with photoshop in the first place, or at least it would be stuck at GIMP-levels.
The thing is, a corporation has the resources and infrastructure (ie apple, or IBM, or macromedia) so that when a customer says, "You know what, we want the stability of unix but with a consisttent and easy-to-use GUI..." the corporation has the capital to pay many engineers/coders to do research and development into the subject, and come up with solutions, and IMPLIMENT them. Orginal ideas.
Take a look at GIMP, or KDE or Gnome. Gimp is a cool product. But when you use it, it feels unfinished. It's unusable for higher-end print work, mostly because the people who are working on it don't have the resources to impliment that functionality, let alone spending the man hours getting it all to work. A corporation has the money (theoretically) to pay code monkees and project managers to get all those things in (even if you personally don't use them).
As for patents... come on, they're necessary. Everyone goes on about how they are there to protect the little guy, but that is mostly just a bi-product.
Patents are really just there because without them, companies and individuals would hold onto their secrets and methods of doing things, and after that company died, etc that technology would be lost. Take damascus steel... it disappeared for ages and couldn't be re-introduced because no one had any idea how it had been made, the process was too highly guarded a secret. Patents are a way for knowledge to not be lost forever, and to eventually enter the public domain. In exchange for that, the company/individual gets protection/exclusivity for awhile. It's just a good thing, even if some of the details are changing because our society has changed.
When the GIMP (or comprable app) can use the photshop 5 keyboard shortcuts
Well, here is another stupid argument coming. Judging professional application by keyboard shortcut compatibility with other application. Is it trained monkey who is going to use it? So that once imprinted with some basic keyboard accords it cannot do anything else effectively? Oh my...
A few un-thought points do not invalidate his entire arguement, nor the rest of the ones he makes.
It always makes me disappointed when someone can't refute someone's key points, so they pick out the smallest things and go after them.
For those trashing Adobe as a greedy company with a $600 program, don't forget something very rare in the software industry: Adobe's license lets you install one copy at work and one at home as long as both aren't used at the same time. Okay, they're just making legal what most people do anyway, but it's a good idea.
Photoshop is a professional tool and is priced appropriately: if you make money off of it, you should pay for it. If you're a student, Adobe has educational discounts at a fraction of retail.
Add that to their distaste for dongles, the general quality of the software, interoperability, Windows-Mac cross platform operation, lower-cost bundling, and reasonable/timely upgrades (a couple minor incidents aside), and I'd say Adobe's pricing and licensing is pretty good.
It's these same companies that spend money on R&D. Just as a company pays a worker $x/hour (plus expenses) to make widgets, it's paying a scientist $y/hour (plus expenses) to come up with new and unique ideas for widgets. It seems odd for a company to invest all that money, only to not own the fruits of that labor.
Even independent scientists generally benefit from being able to sell their patent to a company. Take Thomas Edison, for example. When he invented the electric light bulb, he had no interest in building a production facility. He just wanted to spend his time continuing to create new and different things (which we should all be thankful for). So he sold his patent to a company (GE, I believe, though my memory's not the best) for a sum of money that exceeded his original asking price. Edison was happy as he got more money than he expected, allowing him to continue to invent. GE was happy as they could actually afford to manufacture light bulbs and make a sizeable profit selling them.
Now one could argue that a ban on corporations owning patents would have meant they'd have licensed it from Edison, allowing him to continue to receive money. However, the sale of the patent could've just as easily been reworded in terms of an exclusive, flat rate, 17 year (or whatever the patent lifetime was) contract.
Reset your double click speed dumbass..
Two clicks is still two clicks, no matter how far apart in time they occur.
And you made your install on a WinXX box when the auther clearly states that most graphics people use macs.
The Macintosh interface saves two clicks on "My Computer" (by placing a shortcut to the CD drive on the desktop) and saves three clicks by converting the "associate" options to a single "add desktop droplet", but ten clicks is still greater than five.
Will I retire or break 10K?
That patent was invalidated because of the prior art of Joseph Swan.
Someone should patent the algorithm for shutting out competitors and discouraging competitive markets in software and hardware industries:
When THIS patent goes through, sue the other sharks' asses off.
I tried to do not very complicated things with GIMP. I had 600 DPI A4 picture which I had to make into a poster by adding some text. The picture was full-color TIFF so it had about 16 megabytes. Would be a piece of cake with Photoshop. GIMP took ages to load it and any single operation caused the machine (celeron 566, 128 megabytes of RAM) to swap about 30 seconds (no other tasks running). An undo took about a minute and it was getting worse and worse. The configuration would be perfectly good fot this task if I would use Photoshop.
GIMP is a fine tool for small scale graphics. But for any DTP related work it is too inefficient.
I won't start into area of applying text with GIMP.
Alex